Masterstroke (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Read online

  ‘Yes,’ he answered thickly.

  ‘Bognor?’ He grimaced. Right as usual. The Scotch terrier yap of his immediate superior was what he had expected, and it was what he was now hearing. It whined aggressively at him from the earpiece, causing him to start and hold the receiver away from his head for a few moments until he judged it safe to bring it back to closer proximity.

  ‘There’s no need to shout,’ he said. ‘Yes. Bognor here. At your disposal. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Truly, Bognor, you are a remarkable phenomenon. Death dogs your footsteps, wouldn’t you say, in a manner of speaking?’

  Bognor glanced up at his wife and made circling gestures with his unoccupied index finger, then followed these with further gestures intended to convey the notion of drinking. He was badly in need of some coffee. Monica made one of her ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake get it yourself faces, but retired in the direction of the kitchen, presumably to grind beans.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bognor said into the telephone, ‘I’m not sure I’ve got your drift.’

  ‘Am I not correct in thinking that you attended the gaudy of your old college on Saturday night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And, further, that the college in question is Apocrypha, Oxford?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that the Master of Apocrypha is … was … Lord Beckenham of Penge?’

  ‘Oh, I see. Yes. Lord Beckenham passed away after dinner. But he was seventy-one. And he’d had a dicky ticker. A heart condition. He could have gone any time. My presence was entirely coincidental.’

  ‘I wish I could agree, Bognor.’

  Bognor frowned. In the middle distance he could hear the sound of beans being ground. ‘What are you driving at?’ he asked.

  ‘You tell me Lord Beckenham died from a heart attack?’

  ‘That’s what I was told.’

  ‘Well, I have news for you, Bognor. My information is that the post-mortem shows otherwise. Your old Master was murdered.’

  ‘Oh, really.’ Bognor was quite peeved. ‘Someone’s been having you on. They haven’t had time for a post-mortem yet.’

  ‘Arranged through the good offices of the Fellow in Clinical Pathology.’

  ‘I see.’ Bognor was inclined to say this when stalling for time. He did not see, and Parkinson knew that he did not see. It was a convention.

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ said his boss, ‘because it’s more than I do. I’d be grateful if you would step round at your earliest convenience. I’m afraid someone calling himself Dr the Hon. Waldegrave Mitten is calling on us ere long.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Bognor was prepared for once to concede defeat. ‘Why is Mitten coming to see you? Lord Beckenham has nothing to do with the Board of Trade. It’s a police matter. Nothing to do with us.’

  Monica reappeared with coffee which she handed to him, at the same time pressing a finger to his lips. He was beginning to sound tetchy. It was not good for him, nor for Parkinson. One of her roles in life as Mrs Bognor was to keep him calm.

  ‘As a matter of actual, historical fact, Bognor, Lord Beckenham was once, very briefly, secretary of state for this department. I’m bound to say it was not a happy experience for the department. Nor, I suppose, for Lord Beckenham. But that’s by the way. What I have to tell you, Bognor, is that the demise of Lord Beckenham of Penge, God rest his soul, does have something to do with the Board of Trade, and that something is you. Do I make myself clear? So enough of this shilly-shallying, and get round here PDQ.’

  The phone went dead. Bognor stared at the receiver for a moment, vengefully, then returned it to its cradle and took a slug of coffee. His wife was now sitting on the end of the bed, painting her nails.

  ‘You never used to paint your nails before you married me,’ he said.

  ‘I have to employ all my feminine wiles to make sure you don’t stray.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Do you want to go back to bed?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s out of the question. That was Parkinson. He says the Master didn’t just die, he was killed.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘You don’t sound very surprised.’

  ‘With you I’m never surprised. You ought to know that by now. I’d be much more surprised if you were able to go to an Oxford reunion and come back without leaving at least one corpse behind. I’m surprised you showed such moderation.’

  ‘You sound just like Parkinson. Besides, it’s not funny. Poor old chap’s dead, after all.’

  ‘Yes. Who do you think did it?’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

  Monica put down her nail varnish bottle. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you’re going to have to have the foggiest before too long, because it seems to me that the murderer is almost certain to be someone you know – or knew – moderately well. A contemporary, in fact.’

  ‘And they’re going to ask me to help them find out who? Set a thief to catch a thief?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  This, therefore, represented a particularly bad start to a traditionally bad day. Worse, if anything, was to come. Thanks partly to Parkinson’s telephone call and subsequent discussion with Monica, Bognor was late and had to take a taxi. This cost over three pounds, putting him in an even viler mood than the one in which he had started. Pounding through the subterranean corridors of the Board of Trade, he collided with the tea lady, upsetting hot water over himself. Arriving at his office, wiping at his trousers with a filthy handkerchief, swearing the while, he was astonished to find a smarmy individual in a pinstripe suit sitting at his desk. The interloper gazed up at him with an air of profoundly irritating self-confidence.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

  ‘What do you mean “Yes”?’ Bognor did not normally shout, but this was an exception. ‘This is my office. This is my desk. That is my umbrella stand and that is my personal copy of Who’s Who, paid for with my own personal money. And that’s my tin of Earl Grey. Not to mention my Bitschwiller champagne poster and my Crufts’ poster. They are souvenirs.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the intruder, languidly, ‘must be some mistake. I was told you were in Oxford on a case. That is, if you’re Bognor. Parkinson said you were likely to be in Oxford all week.’

  ‘Did he indeed?’ Bognor wondered whether to seize the man by the lapels and remove him by force, but decided against it. Not that he doubted his ability to do so, but he did not want to make a scene. Parkinson would not like it. ‘And who the hell are you anyway?’

  ‘My name’s Lingard.’

  ‘Lingard who?’

  ‘Lingard nobody. I’m Basil Lingard. How do you do?’

  ‘Not at all well. What’s your position? What are you doing here? Where are you from?’

  ‘Same as you, more or less. Special investigator. I’m from Teddington branch.’

  ‘Teddington branch?’ Bognor swallowed. Teddington, variously known as the Lilac Lubianka or Stalag Luft Thames, was a sort of SS to the Board of Trade’s Wehrmacht. They were crack troops, hard men, marked ‘for emergency use only’.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lingard, ‘Teddington.’ He smiled, evidently under the impression that his provenance gave him the advantage.

  ‘There’s obviously some mistake.’ Bognor wished he could inject a little more certainty into his voice. ‘I shall have to discuss it with Parkinson.’

  ‘You do that.’ Lingard grinned and brushed dust from his lapel in a gesture which was clearly intended to be symbolic.

  Bognor did not smile back. ‘I most certainly will,’ he snapped, and swung on his heel.

  For once he did not knock on the door of Parkinson’s office, but barged straight past his startled secretary and into the sanctum almost in one movement. He was very angry indeed. Once in Parkinson’s office, however, his nerve failed somewhat. The man did not even look up, and although Bognor recognized this as a hackneyed old Parkinson opening gambit he was still disconcerted by it.

  ‘Do sit down, Bognor,’ said Parki
nson, continuing to write on a lined foolscap pad.

  Bognor fixed the portrait of the Queen with an insolent stare. It was curiously foreign of Parkinson to keep a portrait of Her Majesty above his desk; not something that was generally done in Whitehall.

  ‘We leave that kind of chauvinism to the Bulgarians,’ Ian Edgware had told him at the weekend. ‘Understatement is all.’ Not for nothing was Edgware talked of as a coming man at the FO. He made the men of Munich look like ravaging Huns or those unpronounceable European émigrés who were always popping up in the White House to bolster lame duck presidents.

  ‘I prefer to stand,’ said Bognor, directing his remark at his Queen, who stared graciously but unblinkingly back.

  ‘As you wish,’ said Parkinson. ‘I’ll be with you in just one minute.’

  The minute elapsed in a silence punctuated only by the scratch of Parkinson’s pen nib across the paper. At last he drew a thick, very straight line, cast the pen aside and looked up.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  Bognor was not going to help by volunteering some pleasantry. He said nothing at all.

  ‘Something wrong, Bognor?’

  ‘You could say that, yes.’

  ‘Care to tell me what it is?’

  ‘I should hardly have thought that was necessary.’ Bognor thought his sarcasm sufficiently heavy for even Parkinson to catch.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry unduly,’ said Parkinson, spreading his mouth in what, had he been a humorous man, might have passed for a smile. ‘You may be under formal suspicion, but I scarcely think it’s a suspicion which is going to be very seriously entertained.’

  Bognor frowned. He had no idea what Parkinson was talking about.

  ‘I’m alluding to that, that person at my desk.’

  It was Parkinson’s turn to frown and look fuddled. ‘Are you sure you won’t sit?’ he inquired. And on receiving a negative answer he said that, in that case, he too would stand. When he heard this Bognor, wishing to be difficult, said that, in that case, he would sit. The standing was making him giddy.

  The charade completed, Parkinson said, ‘You mean Lingard?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘You’ve not met him before?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Pity. He’s a good man. He may lack your, shall we say, individuality, Bognor, your unorthodox methodology, but he’s eminently sound.’

  ‘I’d prefer it if he went back to Teddington.’

  ‘But Bognor …’ Parkinson raised his eyes to the ceiling and pressed his palms together so tightly that his hands went white. ‘Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly.’ Bognor spoke crisply. ‘The second my back is turned you sneak some whippersnapper from Teddington into my office, plonk him down at my desk and don’t even have the courtesy to tell me about it.’

  ‘On a point of fact I sent you a memo about it last week. Foolish of me. I forgot that it’s not your policy to read internal memoranda.’

  This was perfectly true. It was Bognor’s practice to consign them to the waste-paper basket, unperused, just like bank statements and parking summonses. If it was important, he argued with some justice, he would find out soon enough by word of mouth. If it was not important it was just bumf and should be treated as such.

  ‘What memo?’

  For answer, Parkinson stood up and walked over to the iron-grey filing cabinet, opened a drawer, pulled out a file and extracted a carbon copy of one of the departmental memos which sprayed forth from his desk like confetti. He handed it to Bognor, who read it.

  ‘From HOO (SODBOT) to SI BOGNOR (SODBOT (CC & P)).’ This meant ‘From Head of Operations (Special Operations Department, Board of Trade) to Special Investigator Bognor (Special Operations Department, Board of Trade (Codes, Ciphers and Protocol)).’ The message was succinct, but clear. ‘Re your persistent requests for transfer I am pleased to tell you that subject to availability, medical, interview etc. etc. this has now gained approval. Your successor in this department will be SI Lingard of Teddington branch who will be joining us on 18th inst. and to whom you are to give every assistance during the necessary period of transition.’

  ‘Of course.’ Bognor bit back the smile. ‘I’d quite forgotten today was the 18th inst. Silly me. By the way, how long exactly is the “necessary period of transition”, would you say?’

  Parkinson gave virtually no indication that he was either sceptical or credulous regarding his subordinate’s amnesia. His eyes suggested amusement, but the rest of his expression was frankly frigid. ‘Could be a matter of weeks … or years. It depends.’

  ‘Depends on what?’

  ‘Bognor, I have better things to do than discuss your dubious future, and there is the more immediate problem of the Master’s murder. This man Mitten will be here in a matter of minutes, and I should like to think that we are properly prepared. So may we proceed?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Bognor felt a little better now. He sat back in the regulation hard-backed, imitation leather chair and smiled up at the Queen. She was beginning to go a little sepia at the edges. Almost time for a replacement.

  ‘Now.’ Parkinson shuffled papers with the dexterity of the useful bridge player he was reputed to be. ‘This Mitten. We have nothing on file. What can you tell me?’

  ‘He was my tutor. Well, one of my tutors.’

  ‘Not an absolutely wonderful recommendation.’ This time Parkinson was being humorous. Marginally.

  Bognor took only mild umbrage. ‘Sixteenth-century English history is his speciality. Rise and fall of the gentry. Pre-Elizabethan mainly. Knows more about Henry VIII than any man alive. He did the screenplay for that BBC series called The Other Cromwell.’

  Parkinson scribbled. ‘Trustworthy?’ he inquired, not looking up. ‘Sound? Liked? Respected?’

  ‘Um,’ said Bognor, and hesitated. ‘Not entirely, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘Have a teeny try.’ Parkinson smiled encouragingly. He was used to dealing with Bognor. You had to treat him like a boy of about … twelve, he supposed … maybe thirteen. At least that was his experience. Occasionally he took you by surprise, but twelve or thirteen was usually about right. At least that was how Parkinson did treat him. It had never occurred to him to treat him like an adult. He doubted whether it would be very successful.

  ‘There’s something phoney about him,’ said Bognor, obviously trying hard. ‘For example, he is the Hon. Waldegrave Mitten, but he’s only the younger son of Ernest Mitten, the socialist food freak. Got a peerage from Attlee. Something to do with snoek.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well it doesn’t, you know, make him the thirteenth son of the thirteenth earl or anything, but to see the way he dresses and the way he talks you’d think he was a Cecil or a Cavendish at the very least.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Parkinson did some more scribbling.

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Divorced.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Not that I’ve ever heard of.’

  Parkinson drummed on the desk with his fingers. ‘Popular sort of fellow, is he? With his colleagues? With his students?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Bognor, ‘but only quite. He works too hard at it. Too, you know, ingratiating. I suspect his pupils like him more than his colleagues.’

  ‘Does he have women?’

  ‘He takes women out. Wines and dines them. Invites them to Glyndebourne and Henley. But I’d be quite surprised if he beds them.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Parkinson asked sharply, genuine interest creeping into his voice for the first time during the interrogation.

  ‘Instinct.’ Bognor regretted uttering the word as soon as it had issued forth.

  ‘The trouble this department has had with that instinct of yours, Bognor.’ Parkinson was writing as he spoke. ‘Men have died for your instinct. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Up to a point.’

  Parkinson sucked his teeth. ‘Bit of a Bertie Wooftah, is that what you’re
trying to tell me? Eh? Is that it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Then what would you say?’

  ‘Bit of a nothing, sexually. But I think he’s very concerned to suggest otherwise.’

  ‘No reason why he should have killed off the Master himself?’

  ‘Not that I can think of. No, none.’

  ‘Ambitious, is he?’

  ‘Yes, pretty.’

  ‘He’d fancy being the Master of Apocrypha, would he?’

  Bognor considered this for a few moments. It had never really occurred to him before.

  ‘I think he’d prefer to have the respect of his peers,’ he ventured tentatively. ‘He’s not taken very seriously as a historian. Professional academics are childishly supercilious about colleagues who pander to popular taste. Particularly if they make a bundle out of some TV series.’

  ‘I thought The Other Cromwell was very fine,’ said Parkinson, tetchily. ‘So did Mrs Parkinson, and she is quite an authority. She has, I may say, read every one of Lady Antonia Fraser’s books. And her mother’s.’

  Bognor did not know how to reply to this, but before he was forced into saying something insupportably patronizing he was saved by the bell, or more accurately the buzzer on Parkinson’s desk.

  ‘Mr Mitten and Ms Frinton in reception for you, Mr Parkinson.’

  ‘Then be so good as to send them down.’ Parkinson passed a hand over his scalp, while Bognor experienced a disquieting lurch of the stomach which, unhappily, he recognized as having something to do with emotional/sexual anticipation.

  ‘What’s she doing with him?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah.’ Parkinson rubbed his hands together and smiled in a mildly lascivious manner. ‘I understand you met her the other night. She really is rather special.’

  Bognor felt his jaw betraying him. ‘How do you know I met her the other night?’

  ‘She told me. She’s one of ours, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘What manner of speaking?’

  ‘Principally recruitment.’

  Bognor could no longer repress an expression of incredulity.

  ‘Not all recruitments are as haphazard, and indeed shortsighted, as yours, I’m glad to say,’ said Parkinson. ‘Frinton isn’t just recruiting for us, of course,’ he added. ‘She makes her assessments and pushes people in the direction of whichever branch of the security services she thinks most appropriate.’